


blueberries, not blackmail

by gendzl



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Arthur maintains that Eames can go fuck himself, Eames maintains that possession is nine-tenths of the law, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23683753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendzl/pseuds/gendzl
Summary: If this had happened to anyone else, Arthur would be laughing.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 93





	blueberries, not blackmail

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to @rhysiana for sending me the post that knocked over the domino that resulted in whatever the hell this is.

Of all the things Arthur expected would eventually do him in, stepping off the curb with a sack of groceries in one arm and getting sideswiped by a dick on a motorcycle wasn't one of them.

To add insult to injury, his fake ID was good enough to hold up to the hospital's scrutiny, and he'd been listed under a name nobody in the dreamshare community had known to look for.

(He hasn't had a proper identity since he went AWOL from the Army after one of the initial dreamsharing experiments went _way_ wrong, and he'd been cycling through various Arthurs ever since. Whenever he started getting the familiar itch to run, he'd pick a new birth date and a new last name. The state of Maine had declared the very first Arthur—the original one, Arthur Jacobi, whom he'd left behind along with his service record—dead only a few years previously. The irony was not lost on him.)

The mild sense of amusement, however, fades quickly:

Arthur leaves the hospital a few weeks later with a bill—one he has absolutely no intention of ever paying—thick enough to inspire dread, and it only takes him two weeks to verify in person that most of his assets, everywhere, have been liquidated. His safehouses have all been emptied and sold off. The majority of his bank accounts (excepting only the one that matches his current ID) have been closed.

He scares the absolute shit out of Dom Cobb a month after he wakes up, still unsteady on his feet from muscles long out of use, but no worse a shot for it.

Well, theoretically no worse a shot. In actuality, it's all he can do to keep his arm from shaking beneath the weight of the gun, but pointing it is all he needs to make Dom sit his ass down and talk, so he'll take what he can get.

If this had happened to anyone else, he'd be laughing.

One of the assholes Arthur always refused to work for had spent years chafing at the bit, trying to get his hands on Arthur's legendary, fully customized ("bespoke" was Arthur's preferred term for it, not that he'd ever have admitted it) dreamshare equipment. The whole community was, really. Apparently, a number of them had teamed up and gotten a judge to declare him dead just one year after he disappeared—six years earlier than the law typically required. The group's rather flimsy argument that dreamsharing ought to count as "imminent peril" was probably less convincing than the five hundred thousand dollars they'd bribed her with.

The most sought-after item in Arthur's arsenal was his little black book. As such, it went last at auction.

Some new guy that nobody had ever heard of, Eames, had swooped in and opened the bid at a hefty (and shocking) 1.6 million pounds. By that time, the _bespoke_ PASIV machines had diminished everyone else's pocketbooks enough that they didn't have a hope of outbidding him.

Arthur knew that his notebook wasn't worth anywhere near that much. Its usefulness was almost entirely in the aura of mystery it had garnered as Arthur's name had grown to mean 'competence' within the dreamsharing community. Full of secrets, they'd said. Blackmail. Somnacin formulas, contacts, and enough data to bring down at least four governments. Nobody knew precisely what was in it, and so nobody had dared attempt to steal it, lest they inadvertently bring the wrath of their best point man down on their heads.

In reality it was nothing more than a catch-all, something that landed halfway between a commonplace book and somewhere to keep track of timely reminders. Arthur would jot down notes about whatever job he was currently planning, make grocery lists, sketch, and write down book recommendations. Best of all, he could replace the inner leaves whenever he inevitably filled the thing.

The fact that the cover was expensive, hand-tooled black leather might have had something to do with why everyone thought it was more than it was. (If he used that to his advantage every once in a while, so be it.)

The price Eames paid at auction had almost certainly made the book's mysterious prestige even worse.

Better?

Fuck. He was going to need to get it back. PASIVs he could build (the ones he lost would be three years outdated by now, anyway, and weren't worth going after), but this man—whoever he was—had purchased Arthur's very _reputation_.

Eames takes one look at Arthur on his doorstep, laughs broadly, and slams the door in his face. His laughter echoes up the stairwell.

"Better luck next time, darling!" he calls out.

Arthur hammers at the door for another twenty minutes before Eames gives in and returns, leaning against the door frame with one eyebrow raised and a foot slotted behind the door, as though he thinks Arthur will try and force his way in. As if he _could_.

"I want my notebook back," he says flatly. "It was only auctioned off because everyone thought I was dead, and, as you can see, I am very much alive. You have no right to it."

"Doesn't matter," Eames replies. "It _was_ auctioned off, and I paid good money for it. The notebook's mine."

"It is _not_ yours."

"Yes it is."

"No, it's not." Christ, they're both four years old.

"Is too." Eames is smirking outright.

"There's nothing even remotely useful in it!" Arthur exclaims. He feels almost as pathetic as he sounds.

The look Eames levels him with is entirely pitying. "You think I don't know that? Arthur, when I opened your fancy little notebook and discovered that I'd paid one and a half million pounds for sketches of Penrose triangles and a reminder to buy more blueberries, I about shit my pants." He shrugs. "I realized pretty quickly that just keeping my mouth shut and carrying it around with a disapproving look on my face usually got me whatever I needed. I'm not about to give that up."

 _Fuck_.

It takes three weeks to wear Eames down. It's a subtle task, using nothing but sheer persistence and mild-to-moderate stalking.

"You must be running out of money by now, yes?" Eames asks finally, stopping at the café table Arthur has been sitting at all day, every day, for the last twenty-one days. (Let it never be said that Arthur wasn't a patient man. He's even knit three pairs of socks in that time, so he doesn't consider it all that much of a waste. Besides, this table has the perfect view into Eames' front windows, and the man walks around shirtless more often than not.) "You wouldn't still be sitting here if you weren't out of any other options."

He sets down his knitting and nods. He's had to cut down on tips these last few days. He _hates_ leaving shitty tips.

"And you really are a top-notch point man, yes?"

"I've been out of the loop for three years, but—"

Eames waves this off. "Doesn't matter. You can research anything you missed." He jabs a finger at Arthur's chest. "Top-notch point man?"

"Uh, yes."

"I've got us a job, if you'd like." He raps his fingers against the notebook under his arm and grins.

Arthur isn't a person who splutters, but he becomes _minorly vocally flustered_. "What—you can't—that's mine! If anything, I got you a job! It's _my_ sterling reputation all wrapped up in that leather!"

"Yes, and I'm rewarding you for it by inviting you along. Aren't I nice, darling?" Eames sits down across from Arthur. "Look, Arthur. I'm not giving this back to you, you won't stop trying to wrangle it back from me, and given that you're almost certainly as excellent as I've heard tell, I think the only solution to this is for the two of us to work together for the foreseeable future. It'll be a win-win."

The sigh Arthur lets out is one of total defeat. He really is out of other options.

Remarkably, it goes well.

Better than well.

Something about the two of them working in conjunction with the infamous black book keeps people in line better than when either of them had been working alone.

Arthur is reluctantly impressed by Eames' abilities as a forger. More so with his abilities as a getaway driver, which had been an unexpected but incredibly timely discovery. Marks had _no_ respect for Arthur's black book.

Two more jobs and one sprained wrist later, Eames invites Arthur in for tea.

Tea turns into a nightcap after the dinners they start sharing.

Dinners become sleepovers become sharing a mortgage, because they really do work well together, he and Eames.

In the end, Arthur only gets his notebook back on the technicality that being married means they share everything.


End file.
